ATLAS

An Open Source software that can be used for applying empirical techniques on Linux systems

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ATLAS (Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra Software) is an open source and totally free command-line software implemented in C/Fortran and designed to provide a collection of highly optimized Linear Algebra kernels, which can be used for various cache-based architectures.

Features at a glance

The software has been engineered in such a way that it can provides Fortran77 and ANSI C interfaces, which can be used for the entire BLAS API, as well as for a tiny portion of the LAPACK (Linear Algebra Package) API.

The project’s main goal is to help users apply empirical techniques for portable performance. Efficient BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) implementation, as well as various routines from LAPACK are also included.

Getting started with ATLAS

The software is only available for download as a universal sources archive (tarball), allowing users to optimize and compile it for a specific hardware architecture (32-bit and 64-bit are supported at this time) and operating system.

Therefore, you must download the latest stable release of the project from its official website of via Softpedia, save the package somewhere on your computer, extract its contents with your favorite archive manager software and open a terminal emulator.

In the Linux Terminal, use the ‘cd’ command to navigate to the location of the extracted archive files, create a new folder called ‘MyObj’ using the ‘mkdir’ command and type the ‘./../configure’ command to optimize and configure the program. Various executables and a Makefile will be available in the respective directory.

Detailed installation instruction and information about each command is provided by the ATLAS developers in the project’s Wiki page located at http://math-atlas.sourceforge.net/atlas_install/node6.html.